Skin Graft
by Soldier of Winter
Summary: "Cause all I think about is why/The skin I'm in feels ordinary/The things that you might like/Don't grow inside of me" What he is, is not what he ever was before.


You are pulled from a river, cold and wet and numb. Your skin burns from where it presses sharp against the ice. You lungs ache and strain as your nostrils fill up with snow and your arm is twisted at an awkward and painful angle. They gather around you pressing close against your sides, whispering in a tongue you do not understand. You try to scream but you cannot.

You will never scream again.

* * *

Your arm hurts and you struggle; try to call out, try to break free from your restraints, but cannot. Needles press into your arm sharp and clear and you grit your teeth, grinding them together.

Nothing hurts after that, you feel nothing at all.

* * *

Your arm cannot hold on to the slippery metal tightly enough and your fingers loosen. The joints in your arm pop and the muscles strain in protest.

You scream.

It is the last time.

* * *

When you finally sift through the fog that is your mind, you find yourself sitting on the edge of a bed. Your arm is metal now, but you are not frightened by that. Instead you smile tightly.

You will not lose your grip again.

* * *

In a small alley in Brooklyn an even smaller boy is almost beaten to a pulp.

"Pick on someone your own size!"

You help the boy to his feet.

You do not let go.

* * *

They give you your first mission. You do not know who they are, but you know that they have created you. You know that they have torn you down and built you back up again, and that they will do it again. They're directions, their plans for you, are carefully wired into your brain and they flow as freely as your own thoughts (you do not have your own thoughts, you only have theirs).

You walk into a village of a hundred.

You walk out alone.

* * *

"I had him."

"Sure you did."

* * *

There is a boy with blond hair and bright blue eyes, "Пожалуйста" he cries.

You do not comply.

* * *

There is star on the shoulder of your metal arm, painted on in a deep, rich red. You remember another red star; a star that would fly through the air in a blur of color.

You go to stand, because you do not belong here.

* * *

You look at the boy's corpse and your stomach twists. You remember a smaller, weaker boy, a boy filled with more good than you could ever hold. The boy at your feet is too similar to the one from your hazy memories. You think you might vomit, but the helicopter blades have come to take you away.

* * *

The ice waits for no one not even you its greatest success, so they bleed the twist in your stomach out with 16 years under the ice, so that you will never feel guilt again.

* * *

When you wake up you do not know the year (you have never known the year), you only know the mission and the mission is always to kill.

* * *

She is red.

Red lips, red hair, red blood that pools on your tongue when you press against her hot and tight, your teeth digging into her arm relieved to find flesh there and not metal. Relieved to know that she is not one-hundred percent theirs, that she could still be yours and yours only.

You think you love her.

* * *

The needles make you forget everything, everything except the mission and how to kill.

* * *

They send other girls to you, to train you think.

You rip them open and the bleed red across the floor of your white room.

But not as red as her.

* * *

On a whim, you stop in one of the cities you have been assigned to and pick up a newspaper. The cyrillic script curls around your brain and you read it as easy as if it is your first language (it might be, you do not know). The date tickles familiarly at your brain, but helicopter blades echo in your ears.

You must finish the mission.

* * *

"Where are we going?"

"The future!"

* * *

You find her again in Budapest and her name is Natasha. She is on a mission with some blond haired lacky. You call him птица, because he squints his eyes and hunts like a falcon. The pair of them are there to catch you, and you know it. But you haven't seen her in many years and you can see those years in the curve of her hips that wasn't as prominent as when you knew her. She isn't your Natallia anymore, she has changed too much for that.

You look at your own hands, but you have remained the same.

You and her meet in the middle, pressed together warm and wet. She leans over and stabs a tranquilliser into your neck and presses her lips against the mark left by the dart.

"Пока, моя любовь."

Compromise has never tasted so sweet.

* * *

They are not happy and the helicopter blades press air angrily on his back. There are more needles than before (you think).

You slip and fall and land with a sickening thud on the metal floor.

"слишком! слишком!" It is not your voice because you tongue is swollen grotesquely in your mouth.

Images flash before your mind's eye; hard lines, gentle curves; soft lips crusted with dried blood; the scent of death mingling with the scent of ladies' perfume; green eyes that pierce straight through you in darkened alleys and artificially brightened training rooms; red hair that dances across skin like a shock of bloo-

* * *

red, red, red, red, red, red, red, re-

* * *

blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue

Blue eyes and a blue light and a voice that sounds like the blue of the sky after snow.

"Buck, please, don't you remember who I am?"

"Пожалуйста помнить моя любовь."

* * *

"I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were smaller."

* * *

The skin you wear is not your own, even if Stark has created a synthetic substance to cover the metal. The red star will never come off, no matter how much you scratch. You don't mind though because it reminds you of the blood that has flowed through your metal fingers.

It feels good to remember.

* * *

"I might have put a bullet in my brain to quiet the ghosts if not for Natasha."

* * *

You and Natasha see each other daily and remind each other of the past.

You place your hand over each others hearts in the dark light of your shared apartment. She wraps you around her finger and reminds you of the red that soaks both of your ledgers.

She reminds you that your bodies intertwine through history like the curls of Cyrillic over a newspaper page in 1978.

* * *

You have traveled everywhere; Deserts, jungles, crowded cities, abandoned hideaways. They all have one thing in common, there is someone there that had to die (there is always someone who has to die).

You get the blood and grit and dust of these places in your lungs and under your skin, but they will never be part of you. You hunger for the snow where blood can paint the land like watercolors on a canvas. The place where you were created and recreated a thousand times over. The place from which the red star heralds.

You have become a soldier of winter.


End file.
